Odisha CM suspends former SCERT director, other officials over errors in school textbooks

Odisha Textbook Error Row: Odisha chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi has suspended four senior officials, including the former director of the directorate of teacher education and State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), after large-scale errors were detected in newly published textbooks for Classes 1 to 8.

The action was taken following the report submitted by a high-level inquiry committee headed by Development Commissioner DK Singh.

Besides Manoj Padhi, the former director of the Directorate of Teacher Education and SCERT, the three other suspended officials, all serving as assistant directors, are Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu, and Bharati Tudu.

Padhi is currently the special secretary in the department of school and mass education.

Besides suspension, disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against six assistant directors, including Manas Kumar Nayak, Vandita Patnaik, Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Ranjan Raut, Vinod Mohapatra, and Sudarshan Santhara.

Also read Maharashtra’s new Class 6 social science textbook drops caste system, meat diet; paints rosy Vedic past

Committee recommends a four-point action plan

The committee, formed after the directions of Odisha CM, recommended a 14-point action plan to improve textbook preparation and prevent such errors in the future.

According to officials, the inquiry committee found serious lapses in content review, fact-checking, and quality control during the preparation and printing of the textbooks.

Accepting the committee's recommendations, the state's chief minister's office (CMO) said SCERT would maintain a master errata register and provide every student with a copy of the corrected content.

The textbooks were prepared by the Directorate of Teacher Education (TE) and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) as part of curriculum revisions aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Also read NCERT teaching shame, not respect; blurring of Mohenjo-daro ‘Dancing Girl’ in book draws criticism

QA cell will be set up

A Quality Assurance (QA) Cell will also be set up in SCERT to strengthen the textbook preparation process. The CMO further said no textbook would be sent for printing in the future without mandatory approval of language, images, data, and printing quality.

The other recommendations suggested by the enquiry committee include declaring the corrected PDF version as the official teaching copy, conducting orientation programmes for teachers on revisions, preparing a responsibility matrix for every error, and issuing show-cause notices to the DTP agency, printer and approving authority, followed by appropriate action.

The panel also recommended forming subject-wise Curricular Area Groups and book-specific Textbook Development Committees on the lines of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), implementing a four-stage proofing system with a final locked PDF mechanism, creating a Public Errata Portal, prescribing penalties, performance-based scoring and blacklisting of printers and vendors, and conducting pilot testing for every new textbook before publication.

Serious lapses in content

According to a teachers' group, over 1,600 errors were detected in the school textbook for Classes 1 to 8 students, which drew widespread criticism.

Among the errors were describing Isaac Newton as a pilot, misidentifying the Hampi temple as the Konark Sun Temple, and using images of landmarks from other states in the Odisha context.

The errors triggered concern among teachers, parents, and the public as the new academic session began. With inputs from PTI